New entrance at Nordahl Marketplace in San Marcos to open in November

Shoppers at one of North County’s most traffic-congested malls should find a new, quicker main entrance by the first week of November, officials said.

The new entrance to the Nordahl Marketplace in San Marcos, home to Costco, Walmart, Kohl’s and many other stores, will offer two new turn lanes into the mall from Nordahl Road, just north of the current main entrance at Montiel and Nordahl roads.

“There’s a big push to get everything done by the holidays. If you think there’s a lot of traffic now, by the holidays traffic will be three times as much,” Maryam Babaki, San Marcos’ deputy city engineer, said above the din of a noisy paver machine.

The new traffic signal- controlled entrance will channel drivers to the middle of the Walmart parking lot. The old entrance, just south of the Walmart lot, will be reconfigured to be the mall’s main exit.

Costco shoppers will still be able to use Center Drive to bypass much of the mall and access that store.

The $480,000 city project is one of several improvements either under way or recently completed along Nordahl near Highway 78, a gridlocked interchange notorious for draining drivers’ precious time.

The city, for example, recently added a wider lane through the intersection of Montiel and Nordahl roads, just north of the interchange.

And on Friday morning, the second half of the $11 million wider, taller Nordahl bridge over 78 opened to drivers, said the California Department of Transportation. New lanes on the edge of 78 near Nordahl should be complete by spring 2013, officials said.

While construction on and near Nordahl has caused many residents to avoid the area, Omar Dayani, San Marcos’ traffic engineer, said the recent work is necessary to keep the mall humming.

Dayani noted that before the city helped add the Montiel entrance 15 years ago, “the shopping center was dying” due to a lack of access.

The new main entrance, with its longer turn pocket and faster traffic signal, should allow the flow of traffic “to work out much, much better,” Dayani added.

Hugo Arenas, who works at the KFC near the new entrance, said he hopes the engineers are right.

“It’s supposed to boost sales,” Arenas said last week. “I think it’s going to help a lot.”